Guilty Pleasures Part Twenty-Four -- Valentine's Day 1988

We've taken a few weeks off from this feature and now is a good time to bring it back. One of the cool things about having 40 years worth of Rolling Stone at my disposal is that it has extensive music charts, which allow me to look back at specific moments in time. Today I've chosen to look at what was happening on or about February 11, 1988. It was an eventful moment in my life, that much is certain. Sting was the cover boy that day, but he's not part of this competition as he didn't have a song on the charts at that moment.

So if you were listening to the radio, or hanging out in the dance clubs at that time, what would you have heard? The answer might surprise someone with only a passing memory of the era - what you would have heard was dance music. In fact, everyone was dancing, it seemed.

Yep, even former Beatles were dancing. George Harrison was riding the charts with his biggest hit single in years. It was a jaunty record that he recorded with the help of his Traveling Wilbury pal Jeff Lynne, and in the video George (or more likely, a body double) gets up and busts a move. George told us all that

I've Got My Mind Set on You

Meanwhile, house music was starting to emerge from the post-disco haze and was starting to become a big factor in the clubs. It wasn't my thing back then but some of it sounds a little better now, including this dance smash from the almost-forgotten M/A/R/R/S that could have doubled as a NASA promotional video. Brothers and sisters, it's time to

Pump Up the Volume

Meanwhile, guilty pleasure mainstays the Bangles were on the glide path toward obscurity, but they had a pretty big hit with this rocking cover of an old Simon & Garfunkel song that was part of the soundtrack for a quintessential (but not very good) 1980s movie, Less than Zero. Watch for a young Robert Downey Jr. in between the gals wielding their guitars and lots of PG-13 type action as we experience a

Hazy Shade of Winter

Our final contestant had one of their biggest hits going at this time. I think INXS is a good Guilty Pleasure band - they were tuneful and fun but they weren't especially deep thinkers, as they conclusively demonstrate in their ham-handed attempt to emulate Bob Dylan's famous Subterranean Homesick Blues video from 1965. But the song is fun enough on its own terms and I'm sure many of you remember it well. Here's the ill-fated Michael Hutchence and the rest of the boys telling us that they

Need You Tonight/Mediate

The polls are open. Happy 4th!